Book Review: The Do-Over by Andrew Hessel

The Do-Over


Author: Andrew Hessel
Paperback: 266 pages
Publisher: Old Dog Publishing LLC (April 21, 2012)
Amazon Link




Note: I received a review copy of this book free from the author, Andrew Hessel. The review posted below is based on my personal thoughts while reading the book.




Ratings: ★ ★ ★ ★

My thoughts:

I find the first quarter of the book slow. I could not easily get into it because too much information is revealed about Kiki's family and Little Mo's tragic life. That's my problem with reading a book not in first person pov. I easily get bored seeing long paragraphs. 

The story picked up when Kiki is preparing to travel into the past, and I very much enjoyed reading facts about the 80's. I'm sure Mr. Hessel had fun writing this. It was really fun to read things about it, simple life, not much complication unlike today with computers and internet. 

This is a good book to read. Though it would have been better if the author wrote more about Teddie Biggs and Little Mo's life before and after Kiki's time travel.  There is a little romance, I'm a bit touched by it - more like Somewhere In Time. Now I want to watch that movie again! 

About the book:

Home is not merely a place, but also a time.
Love calls neither master.


Kimberly Ann “Kiki” Kinsler is a twenty-one year-old college student excited to be returning home to Portland, Oregon for summer break and eager to see her family. 
Instead of the happy homecoming that she anticipates, Kiki’s world is upended by an unimaginable tragedy. Her parents and younger sister are dead, victims of Little Mo Biggs, a tragically accidental monster, himself a victim of profound parental neglect and abuse.
Kiki is also attacked and hospitalized but survives.
In the hospital, when all appears lost, she is given an opportunity to wipe away the nightmare, to un-do it, and correct the senseless tragedy. 


A second chance, a wonderful, improbable, and miraculous gift, that doesn’t come easily.
To reclaim her future, Kiki must first correct the injustices of Little Mo’s past, which only can be corrected at the root. 
In doing so, she learns that home is more than a place, it is also a time, and must confront the parallel challenges of life and love, past and present, in a love story with a foot in each world, 2012 and 1981.


The Do-Over is a novel of hope, love and second chances.
We all dream of a second chance.
The question is how far would you go for yours?

About the author:

It’s never too late to heed the call.
How I arrived at this conclusion is in itself a story.
After college I spent nearly three decades in the corporate world, working for big media on the publishing side.  All powerful, successful companies, headquartered in places like  New York, Burbank, and points in between.   My thing was marketing, advertising, sales management and general management.  In fairness, there were some very good years.


We had fun and did good work we were proud of.


But nothing lasts forever, and in the end, after one too many sales, mergers, and acquisitions, I walked away … having had about all the corporate fun I could stand, you might say.


Few thought the newspaper business, struggling and under siege, would ever recover.  Many branded it a dying industry and called it a dinosaur.


Still others said it was already dead.


There was no shortage of opinions, but three things were painfully clear and inarguably true:


Newspapers would never again have the near exclusive relationship they’d too often taken for granted with their readers.  At least not on the scale they’d enjoyed for so long.


Read more here
Author's Website